Lowering retirement age for women judges violate their rights says ECHR
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg has announced that regulations lowering the retirement age of women judges in Poland violate their rights.
The ECHR issued its verdict on Tuesday.
"The case concerned four judges who complained about legislative amendments that had lowered the retirement age for judges from 67 to 60 for women, and to 65 for men, and had made the continuation of a judge’s duties after reaching retirement age conditional upon the authorisation by the justice minister and by the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS)," the ECHR wrote on its website.
The court ruled that the decisions taken in the case of each applicant by the justice minister and the KRS "had constituted arbitrary and unlawful interference in the sphere of judicial independence and protection from removal from judicial office, on the part of the representative of executive authority and the body subordinated to that authority."
According to the ECHR, the applicants' right of access to a court had thereby been impaired in its very essence.
The court also ruled that judges should be protected against arbitrary decisions of the legislative and executive authorities, and that such protection could only be ensured by an independent judicial body.
The court also criticised the regulations as they had introduced a difference in treatment, on the ground of sex, as to the mandatory retirement age for members of the same profession.
According to the ruling, their compulsory early retirement had had obvious negative repercussions on their careers and their prospects in terms of professional and personal development.
The Law and Justice (PiS) government lowered the retirement age back to 65 for men and 60 for women in 2016, scrapping the previous government's legislation that gradually raised the retirement age for both sexes to 67 years of age. (PAP)
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